Boys who came back for more

Recommending the abandonment of birching for boys, a departmental committee reported as far back as 1938: ''We have come to the conclusion that, as a court penalty, corporal punishment is not a suitable or effective method of dealing with

young offenders.''

In other words, it didn't work. Youngsters were thrashed by court order with a severity that would cause outrage in these gentler times, but still came back for more. Boys as young as eight years of age, bloodied by their punishment, reappeared in court just weeks after.

Some courts reported re-offending rates after birching in excess of 50% . . . the quickest return on record being achieved by one lad just three days after having been stripped and beaten.

In Glasgow, for example, of 133 boys birched during the two-year period 1934/35, 48 of them - 36% - were charged with further offences within 18 months.

Scottish courts clung to birching as a penalty for boys aged eight to 16 with greater faith than their counterparts in the rest of the United Kingdom. In 1936, the last really busy year for the application of the birch, 70 boys were sentenced to suffer in Edinburgh, 69 met their fate in Glasgow, and the basement below the court in Aberdeen flogged 26.

Although the 230 birchings in Scotland that year (only 166 in England and Wales) were well down on the 925 of two decades earlier, they amounted none the less to four times as many as administered, on the basis of percentages of convictions, south of the Border. And the sentences permitted were considerably more severe.

In England and Wales boys aged eight to 13 were liable to a maximum of six strokes of the birch. But in Scotland the penalty was 12 strokes for boys up to 13 while those aged 14 to 16 could receive a maximum of 36 strokes of a birch or heavy three-tongued tawse.

Birches, soaked before use to make them flexible, were scaled according to the size of the target: a short model for the eight to 10-year-olds, a larger, heavier instrument for their bigger brothers. Each had to be certified ''effective'' by a local sheriff before use.

To give some idea of what ''effective'' meant it is worth nothing that the severity of the punishment called for medical supervision of all sentences of birching in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and in some other towns in Scotland.

Doctors examined each boy before he was birched, were present throughout its infliction, and were authorised to fix a smaller number of strokes if they considered the prescribed number could not be inflicted consistent with the health of the boy.

Also they had the power to stop the punishment ''on medical grounds'' at any time during its course.

To assist the police inflicting the birch some Scottish courts had benches specifically manufactured to which boys could be strapped so that they could not move.

In Glasgow the bench was set upright, holes cut for the boy's feet and with straps for ankles, thighs, and waist with others fitted for his upstretched arms.

In Edinburgh an ordinary bench was used. The boy, face down, had his ankles held by one policeman while another gripped his elbows.

For all that the departmental committee reported: ''Birching is essentially a minor penalty, suitable for offenders who are not in need of any prolonged discipline or training and require only a sharp lesson to remind them of the consequences of misbehaviour.''

Newspaper clippings show the wide application of corporal punishment to juveniles in Scotland. Hoax calls to the fire brigade, putting obstacles on railway lines, cruelty to animals, and vandalism were almost certain to lead to a visit to the cells below the court, an examination by the police doctor, and a thrashing across bare buttocks that drew blood. Regulations required the punishment to be ''sufficiently severe to cause a repetition of it to be dreaded''.

The average age of boys birched in the 1930s and 40s was 12 and, according to the departmental committee report, as usually administered by police officers to juveniles no physical harm was done.

Indeed: ''From the point of view of securing an effective punishment the greater danger is that it will not be sufficiently severe. A medical practitioner who has supervised a large number of birchings in Scotland has assured us that for a normal boy even 12 strokes involves no danger from the physical point of view,'' reported the committee.

But it was in no doubt that the birching of boys did not work. It rejected the principle of retribution, held that birching was not constructive, reported that only in very exceptional cases was it reformative, and made it clear that in so far as being a deterrent the re-offending figures spoke for themselves.

Held up by the outbreak of war, the committee's recommendations for abolition did not become law until July 30, 1948, just over 50 years ago. Strangely, given that birching is long consigned to history, there are still pro and anti-birching lobbies: their arguments generally owing more to prejudice than knowledge.

Sixty years ago the departmental committee was well aware of this quirk - ''views on the subject were in many cases based on sentimental rather than intellectual conviction'', it wrote.

In recommending the abolition of birching the committee expressed the hope that juvenile courts would be given further powers which would enable them to deliver an effective deterrent to youngsters ''who merely need some form of sharp punishment''.

So far discovery of that ''effective deterrent'' has eluded the wit of mankind. And this summer, 50 years after Scottish sheriffs lost their power to birch bad boys, it is unlikely that the European Court of Human Rights will come up with the answer.